


Baldi's Basics in Employment and Training

by rouxlscucked



Category: Baldi's Basics (Video Game)
Genre: AFAB reader - Freeform, Abuse of Authority, Anxiety, BDSM, Daddy Kink, Depression, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, Humiliation, Hypersexuality, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Other, Panic Attacks, Psychological Torture, Punishment, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Teacher-Student Relationship, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships, Verbal Humiliation, lying, naming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:42:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26803090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rouxlscucked/pseuds/rouxlscucked
Summary: You are an exhausted, mentally ill student inches away from being kicked out of your college. To make up your credits for this semester, you need to get a job. Yet things take an awful turn when you meet one very strange-looking Math teacher, and are invited to come work at his schoolhouse...
Relationships: Baldi (Baldi's Basics)/Reader
Comments: 28
Kudos: 83





	1. Bald-Faced Lies

**Author's Note:**

> hello there!! please note that this fic is planned to be multi-chaptered, and it will get progressively darker as it goes on. if you suffer from any kind of mental health issues or have specific trauma like that which is described in the tags, please be cautious when reading, and take care of yourself. i am 1000% embarrassed at having written this, but hopefully some of you will enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it. thank you for all of your support :)

There’s nothing like a job fair to make you feel like you’re going nowhere with your life.  
  
This is the thought that seeps into your brain as you take a shaky step into the gym. You’re immediately assaulted by a wall of noise, one you couldn’t have been prepared for even though you saw the mass of moving bodies from far down the hallway. You breathe through your nose all shallow, trying to ignore the omnipresent reek of sweat and collegial desperation.  
  
You hadn’t wanted to come here. A huge crush of people crammed together in a squeaky-floored gymnasium, with their bombastic voices amplified by obnoxious boomboxes playing from every stall, seeking to grab your attention and be the most ‘down with the kids’ - well, it was your idea of hell. You certainly didn’t relish the opportunity of shoving your way to the ‘best’ stalls, trying to seek out the most lucrative employment opportunities. Your small frame and polite nature didn’t make you an ideal candidate for the kind of shoulder-barging required to so much as catch the eye of your potential employers. That’s not even bringing up the anxiety wrapping a vice-grip around your neck...  
  
God. Why does it feel like job-hunting was made to specifically exclude you?  
  
Yet you trudge onwards regardless, with the disapproving stare of your supervisor present in your mind’s eye. Thanks to your mental health and its increasing lack of stability, you’d missed almost an entire semester of work, putting you far behind your peers and even further behind in the eyes of your college. Although it wasn’t said in as many words, the implication from your supervisor was clear.  
  
You needed to secure a job for your second semester, or you wouldn’t be graduating.  
  
So you look along the stalls, hoping that something even mildly interesting would leap out at you. You’re surrounded on all sides by your fellow students, people you know by sight but not by name. Talking animatedly and proffering pamphlets, the suited schmucks sent by their bosses to recruit bright-eyed young adults gently hook, line and sinker their prey, making sure to bait with a promise of, ‘flexible hours’ or ‘competitive salary’ before reeling them in.  
  
Part of you knows that this thought process is something your therapist would call, ‘unproductive and unhelpful’.  
  
The other part of you feels nauseated.   
  
You carry on through the gym, trying your best to duck beneath the sea of waving elbows and flailing hands. To soothe yourself, you reach up and clutch the pendant hanging around your neck, rubbing your thumb on the smooth green jewel finishing the silver chain. Above the countless heads and between the trunks of torsos, you make out dull-coloured words in sensible fonts emblazoned across stall banners: words like ‘leadership’ and ‘awareness’ and ‘connectivity’. The crowd thickens the further you move along the aisle, and soon you’re so densely packed in that you can feel the heat radiating from all the other bodies holding you trapped.  
  
Oh, this isn’t good. You’ve only been here ten minutes but already you can feel your core temperature skyrocketing and your pulse thrumming with the insistence of a car engine about to give out. A well of anger bubbles up under your increasing fear - today wasn’t the best of days, but you thought you could at least stand being around other people long enough to sign up for some boring administrative job.  
  
You whirl around as someone shoves past you. You hear yourself apologise in a weak voice, but the person has already vanished - and another person is suddenly pressing in on your other side, far too close. In seconds it feels like you’re being crushed, like a fresh piece of gum ready to be chewn and ripped by ravenous molars and incisors. Panic floods your insides. Damn your supervisor, you need to get out _now_ .  
  
In desperation, you twist around, looking for any sort of gap. You can barely see any of the stalls now, there are too many people caging you in. But then, like magic, you glimpse an out - a gap in the bodies!  
  
You shove forward and dive through the gap.  
  
When you pop through the other side, mercifully devoid of any more grasping limbs, you exhale in gratitude.  
  
But the exhalation is cut short when you are greeted by the sight on the other side.  
  
Before you is a stall - with the fact that it is a stall being where the resemblance to all of the others ends. First of all, the stall table is bare - nothing but unvarnished wood - and positively rickety-looking, covered in scratch marks and pencilled graffiti. Second is the shoddy and lopsided banner hanging like it would rather be stuffed to the back of some forgotten closet. Uncomfortably off-white and crinkled - presumably from being folded up - the banner is emblazoned with some unforgivable Comic Sans text, in a range of eye-watering reds, blues and greens. In bemusement, you read the banner:  
  
**‘BALDI’S BASICS IN EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING** **™’.  
  
** Third, is the very strange-looking man sitting at the otherwise abandoned stall. Even sitting down, he looks impossibly tall - well over six foot, punching above the six and a half mark if you had to guess. His sticklike torso and skinny arms lend to a disturbingly alien appearance, one aided by a pair of intense, so-brown-they-might-be-black, eyes. In possibly the strangest cosmetic decision you’ve ever seen, the man is entirely bald, save for a single long lock of soft brown hair sticking resolutely upwards and away from his skull. Clad in a kelly-green turtleneck, the fellow certainly stuck out as very different from anyone else in the room. Indeed, everyone gave the stall a wide berth.  
  
You couldn’t blame them.  
  
“Hi!”  
  
You blink at him. Looking back, you wish you hadn’t been so rude as to not reply, but the man’s appearance was so odd that all of your brain capacity was taken up trying to process it.  
  
“Baldi’s...Basics?” You ask, your panic momentarily forgotten.  
  
To your surprise, the man’s mouth - a shocking crimson shade that must be lipstick - curves upwards into a bright smile.  
  
“That’s me!” He says, all jovial. His voice has a curious nasal quality to it, somewhat deep yet almost comical in its enunciation. He gestures broadly to the table. “Welcome to my stall!”  
  
“I, uh- sorry to disturb you, sir,” you stammer. “I was just trying to get away from everyone.”  
  
Internally, you curse yourself. You came here to look for jobs, and now you’ve finally struck up a conversation you’re blathering on like an idiot! For a second, you consider making a dash back into the throng of the crowd. But the man at the stall - Baldi? - is offering you a kind and concerned look.  
  
“You don’t look so well,” says Baldi. “Can I help?”  
  
“It’s nothing!” You say, all too quickly. Baldi’s dark eyes are boring into you like a drill, expectant and unyielding. You’re suddenly all too conscious of your own body - acutely aware of your skin flushing, your heart racing, your palms becoming slick with sweat. The laser-focus of this random, honestly terrifying-looking man wasn’t something you had prepared for. The edges of a panic attack creep up into your throat.  
  
You manage to choke out, “I just...don’t like crowds.”  
  
Baldi chuckles. “I can see that. You’re terrified.” He glances around at the milling people keeping a determined distance from his stall, and beckons you over with a long, spidery hand. “Come here.”   
  
“I…”  
  
Oh God, you think you’re going to puke. You’re rooted to the spot as a fitful tremble starts to overtake your body. You want to speak, to move, to say or do anything that would get you out of this situation, but there are too many people around you. Until this moment you’d managed to keep your constant negative thoughts to a low, but they’ve grown steadily from a dull whisper to an all-encompassing roar. You couldn’t move even if you wanted to.  
  
To your horror, Baldi - who until this point was safely confined behind his stall table - pushes back his chair and rises up to his full, petrifying height. Adrenaline shoots through your body, and you stumble backwards in fright. You smack into some poor soul directly behind you, who shouts in pain. You twist around desperately, a half-formed apology getting trapped in your mouth, but freeze as an impossibly long shadow drapes over you and your unwitting victim.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Baldi says to the student you hit. “They’re not feeling very well.”  
  
Before you can protest, Baldi seizes your wrist, and starts pulling you from the hall. You’re only dimly aware of the crowd parting like the sea around you, and of the hushed whispers following you with mortifying insistence. This lanky behemoth of a man tugs you along with no regard for how immobile your legs are, or how his huge steps leave you dragging and struggling to keep up. Your trainers squeak in desperation against the floor, and yet Baldi’s grip remains impossibly strong, especially for someone with such thin arms.  
  
But you don’t cry out, and you don’t resist; you just let Baldi wrench you towards the door. Your whole body is paralysed with a potent potion of shame and horror. Like it does so often when you feel emotions of this size, your brain and body decide to cut ties with one another, leaving your dissociating shell of a body to flail around like a ragdoll according to the whims of whoever presently has you in their clutches.  
  
And right now, that’s an ungainly giant whose fingers are bruising your wrists.  
  
Before you know it you’re finally out of the throng and are pulled through a hallway. As the job fair is well underway now, the further you move down the corridor the less people are pushing past. You manage to gain a little control of your footing, and are able to keep up with Baldi by walking two quick steps for his every one. But when he veers off suddenly to the left and speeds down a darkened corridor, you yelp and stumble, helplessly trying to regain your footing.  
  
Baldi skids to a slamming stop, just before you fall, and yanks you violently back up to your feet.  
  
“Here we are!”  
  
You’ve stopped in front of a door. Baldi produces a key from his pocket, unlocks it, and ushers you inside.You’re quick to note that he does not lock the door from the inside: something which you think most normal people wouldn’t notice, but to you, feels imperative.  
  
Entering the classroom is like stepping onto another planet. After the harsh, processed fluorescent lights that lit up the gymnasium and the stuttery darkness of the corridor, the evening sun pouring in through the window and drenching the classroom in gold knocks your panic for six. The early autumnal vibe of this room is not lost on you, as you gaze around at the empty desks and forgotten textbooks piled high in defiance of the crisp air.  
  
It’s a gorgeous scene.  
  
A sharp _screech_ interrupts your thoughts. You jump, only to see Baldi pulling two chairs out from behind a desk. He sits down on one (completely failing to get his legs under the table) and gestures for you to sit on the other side. After a moment’s deliberation, you comply. This was hardly the kind of situation you’d been in before - who knows how someone else would react? You take a seat and find yourself looking - still up, even while he’s sitting down - into those beetle-black eyes that so terrified you only moments ago.  
  
“Take this.”  
  
Baldi pulls something out of his pocket. You stare dumbly at the proffered object. It’s a deep blue can, with ‘BSODA’ emblazoned across the side. Baldi pops open the top and hands it to you.  
  
You sip at the drink - and immediately gag as a bitter, overly chemical taste flourishes on your tongue. You flush through a round of coughs as Baldi laughs and takes the can back.  
  
“Sorry, sorry! It’s an old trick. If you taste something strong when you’re panicking, it can help bring you back to reality.” He examines the can. “Though, my students like this stuff. I don’t see the appeal.”  
  
“You’re- not giving me- a great first impression,” you gasp in between coughs. Somehow, being in the smaller space of the classroom with considerably less people per square foot, your anxiety is starting to dissipate. Either that, or there was some truth to Baldi’s words. “Did you say your students?”  
  
Baldi smiles. “Yes - I’m a teacher! Can you guess what I teach?”  
  
Perhaps it speaks to your level of paranoia that your immediate reaction to this earnest, participation-required question was to feel concerned. Who was this weird guy, pulling you into a deserted room and asking you random questions? Yet the sickening fuzz that always comes with a panic attack is subsiding, and the world is looking a lot clearer. Besides, he did help you. Now Baldi is sitting across from you and you can see him up close, he appears much less monstrous. In fact, you feel a little guilty for making such a nasty snap judgement.  
  
So, you decide to play his little game by examining him properly. What would someone with his extreme physique, strength, and unusual choice of aesthetic teach?   
  
“...P.E.?”  
  
You jump as Baldi throws back his head and laughs, a powerful, throaty guffaw which punches through the air as a, ‘Ha-ha-HA!’ It’s such a sincere, joyful noise that your own lips twitch up into the ghost of a smile. The part of your brain that is enamoured with the unusual finds this strange man and his weird laugh quite charming. That’s a lesson to you about making quick judgements.  
  
“Gosh, no. I teach everybody’s favourite subject: math!” Baldi looks at you with shining eyes. “Do you like math?”  
  
_Does anyone?_ you think. But you wouldn’t voice such a thought even if Baldi had been rude to you - it’s never nice to knock down someone’s passions. So you wrack your brain, and try to answer as honestly as possible:  
  
“I’m not very good at it,” you admit, “but I enjoyed it when I was a kid. I think the way math is taught past middle school is kind of designed to be un-fun...so if you aren’t super talented from the start, or if you want to get better at it, then you start to think you don’t like it.”  
  
You’re gratified when a gentle smile spreads across Baldi’s face. “That is an astute observation! Thankfully, my students are all a little younger than middle school age, so I can instill in them a healthy love of math…” He fixes you with that intense stare that you’re now getting used to. “And hopefully the ability to make observations like yours.”  
  
“Thank you, Mr. Baldi.”  
  
“Please. Just Baldi is fine.” Baldi glances towards the door, and then leans in conspiratorially towards you. “Between you and me, I don’t enjoy this type of event much either. A good birthday bash, sure, but a job fair? We could do without the formalities. I’m just here looking for a teaching assistant.”  
  
You feel your ears metaphorically perk up. You think, _look - an opportunity!_ Better prospects have quite literally grabbed you by the arm. Yet even as you become excited at the possibility, a hundred other worries start crowding into your head. You, a literature student, weren’t even qualified to sit in with kids doing tests as an invigilator, much less take up an assistant teaching role in an elementary school. This guy, weird as he might be ( _and kind_ , your mind supplies) will balk the second he realises what a waste of space you are. You’ve never been useful to anyone, and it would be a crime to let you pass on your unique brand of nihilism and illness to some unsuspecting kids.  
  
“I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for.”  
  
The look of confusion on Baldi’s face actually hurts. “Why do you say that?” he asks, his voice a little softer.  
  
“I...might not be here next semester,” you say, with a mouth that feels desert-dry. Before you can stop yourself, it’s all pouring out of you in a rush: “The past couple of years have been really tough. Stuff at home hasn’t been so good, and I just got out of a...bad relationship.” You feel your ears flushing, knowing that talking about your personal life with a teacher is one of those lines not usually crossed, but you don’t feel like you can close your mouth. “Coming into college every day has been getting harder and harder. My supervisor isn’t really sympathetic to mental health, and I just feel so weak and helpless all of the time...some days I don’t even think waking up is worth it anymore.”  
  
As you finish, you realise you’re panting from the exertion. Getting all of that out in one fell swoop feels like letting a leech siphon some dark poison from your veins. All you’re left with is a creeping sense of emptiness and dread, as you look up at Baldi and wait for his reaction. His face is stony and unexpressive, and you can tell those eyes are turned inward, calculating something.  
  
Eventually, Baldi says, “Do you know your worth?”  
  
The question takes you off guard. _My worth? I have no worth_ is what your mind immediately responds, full of venom. But that isn’t the kind of reply you can give to an authority figure, especially not one who just asked an incredibly weird question. So you opt for, “No, I don’t think so.”  
  
A beat.  
  
When Baldi starts talking again, his voice is considerably more sombre.  
  
“The world can be a very harsh place,” he says quietly. “Your trials are by no means unique, I’m sure...but that doesn’t make them less painful. I remember being your age, and it was never easy. So many growing pains.  
  
“That being said, what I see before me is a very bright and talented individual. It’s clear that you have wit and drive, and the fact that you still come in every day is testament to your abilities. It’s no easy thing to admit when you’re in need of help. It seems that you are torturing yourself for what you think you aren’t. I’d like to offer you the opportunity to meet the real you again.”  
  
Baldi reaches across the table and places his large hand over your considerably smaller one.  
  
“Sometimes, you need to _get out while you still can_ .”  
  
The last line comes out of Baldi’s mouth with such fire, a shudder runs through you. But the warmth of his hand and the intensity of his gaze, all frozen warmly in the golden shadows splintering behind the teacher’s back - it makes hot wetness well up behind your eyes.  
  
“Thank you,” you whisper.  
  
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” Baldi says, and he sounds so sincere and honest that a tear escapes and slides down your cheek. He doesn’t let go of your hand, and in that moment, you don’t want him to. His large palm envelops the back of your hand so comfortably, you can’t help but feel totally safe in his grasp, a far cry to the terror of your meeting.  
  
How quickly first impressions can change.  
  
Finally, much to your dismay, Baldi removes his hand. “Listen to me, rambling on,” he says with a chuckle. “You’d think I teach English, not Math!”  
  
“Oh no, I like listening to you,” you say without thinking. When Baldi gives you a quizzical look, you backtrack quickly, saying, “I mean you have a nice way with words! I study literature and I think you could definitely give some of my classmates a run for their money.”  
  
To Baldi’s credit, he has the grace to look embarrassed. “How sweet of you! I’m flattered. I hope that you will come to impress me with your own math skills as we work together! I can see that you’re exactly the kind of person I want to have working in my schoolhouse.”  
  
He stands up, heads over to the teacher’s desk at the front of the room and retrieves a stack of papers from within a drawer. “How about I show you the documents you need to sign to make your employment official, and then I can have a word with your supervisor before the day is out?”  
  
“That sounds wonderful,” you sigh. You mean it, too. Somehow, this crazy-looking man is offering you a fantastic solution to all of your problems. You feel like you can breathe for the first time in weeks. Even though the fears of working in a new environment in a subject you don’t know anything about loom on the horizon of your anxiety, right now, a tangible evil has been conquered.  
  
You can’t help but smile as you watch Baldi lope back to your desk - what a gawky character he is. With such a sweet and unusual man as your mentor, you’re sure you’ll be wildly entertained this semester.  
  
As Baldi takes a pen out of his pocket, he lowers his voice in a clandestine manner, as though anyone could be listening in. “This isn’t strictly the most orthodox way of hiring someone, but I’m sure I can twist a few arms to get you a spot.”   
  
Maybe it’s naive of you, but you can’t help feeling a little proud that Baldi is confiding in you in this way. It feels the same way it does when you hear one of your teachers bitching about a colleague - something private and usually only reserved for those who instruct you. To be treated like the adult you are isn’t something that you’re used to, and you find you rather like it. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”  
  
Baldi grins at you.  
  
“ _Good girl_.”  
  
You freeze in your seat.  
  
Baldi, still standing, looms over you, his red-stained mouth pulled into an amused smile. Your eyes lock with his, and you stare into the void-black depths feeling like you’re about to be swallowed. A poison flush blooms deep in your chest and belly. In seconds you can feel the heat coursing along your skin, spreading in a traitorous crimson that must colour your cheeks and ears.  
  
“Is something wrong?”  
  
Baldi’s voice twists the heat in your stomach. His words slant with a pointed malice, an edge which was not present before. It’s a quiet, insidious mocking - the tone of someone who knows exactly what they’re saying, and what effect it’s having. You try to speak, but a choked sound is all you manage. You reach up to grasp at your pendant, hoping that the smooth surface of the stone will calm you.  
  
To your shock, Baldi drops his papers and pens, and places his palms flat on the desk, on either side of your own frozen arms. He leans down, arching his spine like a cat, to bring his face uncomfortably close to yours. On reflex, you clench your legs together, and tighten your fists. You swallow as Baldi’s lips part just slightly, revealing his teeth.  
  
“P-please excuse me,” you squeak.  
  
You stand up sharply, sliding your chair back with a squeal. Baldi studies you as you back away, walking backwards and stumbling into a desk.  
  
As you reach the door, Baldi straightens up. You tense your legs, getting ready to break into a sprint.  
  
To your surprise, Baldi merely sits down.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
He tugs a pair of spectacles out of his pocket, positions them at the end of his nose, and begins to sift through his paperwork.  
  
You stare dumbly, waiting for Baldi to say something else - but he ignores you, and starts signing.  
  
Before he can change his mind, you yank open the door and take off at a run.  
  
You trip a couple of times as you make a beeline for the bathroom that you know is at the other end of the hallway. The corridor is even darker at this end, and your heart hammers in your throat as you smash open the door and dash into the most distant cubicle. You slam the door shut, lock it and lean up against it, chest heaving, blood thrumming in your ears.  
  
You inhale sharply through your nose and listen hard, trying to determine if anyone else is in the bathroom with you.  
  
All you hear is silence.  
  
With a groan, you hurriedly unzip your jeans and plunge your fingers beneath the constriction of your panties.  
  
“Oh, no no no no _no_ …”  
  
Your fingers come away soaked.  
  
You’re dripping.   
  
“This isn’t right,” you whisper, staring at the glistening liquid coating your digits. Yet Baldi’s words curl salaciously in the rolling boil of your mind, poking and prodding you like you’re a specimen waiting to be dissected.  
  
**_Good girl.  
  
_ ** You shudder as you slip your fingers back, the cold of your fingertips sliding between wet folds and reaching a pulsing heat. You bite your lip as you gently capture your clit between your index and middle fingers, feeling the way your own fluids have managed to coat every inch of your throbbing pussy. Guilt drenches your insides, but rather than dousing the flame, your abject horror and embarrassment at being caught in such a compromising position is setting every part of you ablaze.  
  
A couple of twitches from your fingers set you into a rocking, gentle motion, and you massage your clit slowly, rolling over your slickness and jutting your hips with each rotation. You brace yourself up against the cubicle door, jeans now pooling around your ankles, and whimper as quietly as you can into the bitten flesh of your mouth.  
  
_What a freak you are.  
  
_ The nasty voice that thrives and breeds inside the dark recesses of your brain has slunk to the forefront. In its role of persecutor, you’re all too familiar with the kinds of things it says when your arousal is involved. But with this new stimuli of scornful praise from a terrifying authority figure, it’s like the voice has fed and multiplied, cloning itself into ceaseless copies echoing depraved, taboo thoughts into every crevice of your mind…  
  
_It takes nothing at all to get you wet, does it? The first man who comes along and tells you something innocent and you’re ready to get on your knees. How depraved - this sweet older guy gives you a compliment and you’re on the edge already. He was so lovely and helpful, so kind...  
  
_ “Shut up,” you mumble, your face on fire. Nevertheless you keep rubbing at your clit, needing more and more pressure.  
  
_Oh, but that’s not it, is it? His words are one thing - but the way he held you is another. That grip was so tight, so forceful. And he wasn’t even_ trying.  
  
A little whine escapes you as your thumb drags across the sensitive head of your clit, making your hips buck and causing your knees to connect with the cubicle door.  
  
_He’s so tall and imposing. You see how he looked leaning over you, your faces so close together, his hands trapping you in? If he wanted to hurt you, he could. If you hadn’t spoken up, maybe that’s what he would have done. Maybe he could have grabbed you by the collar and thrown you over the desk. He could’ve ripped off your clothes and dragged those long, long fingers all the way down your chest, dipping between your legs while whispering-  
  
_ “Good girl,” you hiss. The words uttered from your own mouth quickly change, however: circling within the inner heat of your brain in a hot, ugly chorus, a metastatic chant that starts to morph into an awful, sensual approximation of Baldi’s voice.  
  
**_Good girl,_ ** Baldi whispers over and over again. The high nasal tone and elongated vowels you’ve only so recently become accustomed to take on a life of their own inside your head, creating and forming words in his voice that he has never said to you, but you desperately wish he would:  
  
**_That’s it, my good girl. Come now, don’t squirm. You look so pretty, spread like this. Even better with your mouth open.  
  
_ ** In your mind’s eye, the smiling Baldi - how appealing those unnaturally red lips look to you now - has you trapped, pinioned against a desk, your legs spread wide. The imaginary Baldi - long and sinister and cast in shadow - keeps hold of your neck with one hand, and reaches his fingers under your pants with the other. He smirks as his fingers brush your wetness, and makes a little _tsk tsk_ noise.  
  
**_So wet for me already, huh? Hardly becoming of an employee. I think you’re enjoying this a lot more than you should. How terribly_ ** **naughty** **_of you.  
  
_ ** Imaginary Baldi’s fingers move in tandem with your own. A choked noise escapes you as you shove a finger inside of yourself, and Baldi does the same, moving with such ease in your slickness that you barely feel the stretch. But it’s nowhere near enough, and so together you and Imaginary Baldi push a second finger deep inside of you, this time pulling you wide enough to burn. You rub your clit, harsh and frantic, as heat coils treacherously in your stomach and a flush of warmth shoots up to your neck. Your hips buck with the desperate motion of a person about to come undone, someone teetering at the edge of bliss yet ready to collapse into a dark descent.  
  
**_Quiet down. You wouldn’t want anyone to hear you, would you?_ ** Baldi’s smile warps into something cruel and lascivious. **_Unless that is exactly what you want. For everyone to see what a needy little slut you are. To see how easy it was to get you here, to trap you and tease you and fuck you.  
  
_ ** This shadow-Baldi, a fuzzy figure painted only in stark strokes and bold colours, leers at you, his eyes roving over your trembling form and drinking in every last drop. His fingers thrust into you in time with yours, his long thumb pressing insistent, maddening circles into your clit. He leans over you, breathes harshly onto your neck, and hisses into your ear.  
  
**_I can’t let such unsavoury behaviour slide.  
  
_ ** Baldi’s fingers curl deep inside of you, and you groan in mortification, in arousal, and in pure desperation as he bites out his final words:  
  
**_I’m going to have to_ ** **punish you.  
  
** You cum with such violence that for a second, your knees give out. Obscene pleasure rips through your insides, making you buckle and slam right into the cubicle door. You gasp and tremble as your body stutters over the wave of your orgasm. Your mouth hangs open as your stomach convulses with the force of it, and a string of saliva slips from your bitten, flushed-red lips.  
  
You don’t move for a good few minutes.  
  
_Oh, my God.  
  
_ Eventually, you manage to pull yourself up from your semi-crouched position. You slowly zip your jeans back up, open the cubicle, and drag yourself over to the sink.  
  
First you wash your hands thoroughly and dry them on your jeans, not wanting to use the hand-dryer and draw attention to this bathroom. You were lucky that no one else came in during your excursion - there was no way you were completely noiseless with an orgasm of that strength. A sharp splash of freezing cold water brings you a bit out of your reverie. You blink as you look at your reflection in the mirror: flushed and dazed, with flyaway strands of hair and spots of red in your cheeks belying what you’ve done. You lick your dry lips and massage some of the cool water into your cheeks. Hopefully it will reduce the redness.  
  
As you gaze at yourself with your still-dilated pupils, your mind wraps up the images so recently flooding through your mind and tucks them away for later. It’s something that has always happened to you, for as long as you could remember - which admittedly is not very far back. Sometimes you feel possessed by a preternatural energy, something manic and uncontrollable that seizes your every sense until you have to do whatever has grasped your mind…  
  
_Like jacking off to a guy you’d met half an hour ago.  
  
_ Once over, however, the memory of your actions is foggy at best, and all attempts at probing for recollection slide off like water off a duck’s back.  
  
This is how, as the water works at bringing your core temperature down and reducing the redness in your cheeks, you are able to sigh and smile at yourself in the mirror. You don’t need to take responsibility for your own weirdness right now. All of that nervous, anxious energy has sloughed off you, and even the solidness of Baldi’s tantalising words is fading into the background.  
  
You are confident that in a few moments you can make your way back to the classroom, apologise for the delay, and sign up for this TA position.  
  
After all, this incident has to be a one-off.  
  
You give yourself a final weak nod in the mirror before exiting the bathroom.  
  
“Oh, hi!”   
  
You yelp and spin around. Baldi, in all of his horrifyingly tall glory, is leaning up against the wall a few feet away from the bathroom door. He’s holding the stack of employment papers from before on top of a clipboard. He beams at you.  
  
“B-Baldi,” you stammer. “I’m- so sorry, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”  
  
“My apologies for startling you. You were gone an awfully long time, and I thought it best to come check on you. I just wanted to let you know, I’ve signed all the papers! All that’s left for you to do is sign your name at the bottom of this sheet.”  
  
Baldi extracts the top sheet and hands it to you alongside the clipboard and a pen.  
  
You swallow as you take the items and scan the page. As you try to read, your internal monologue - usually quelled by the shaking of an orgasm - starts to scream:  
  
_He isn’t supposed to be here! Did he hear you? Oh God, what if he knows?!  
  
_ You’re so flustered that the words blur together as you read.  
  
“Are you quite all right? You look flushed.”  
  
You look up at Baldi, who is now craning over you with a concerned look. You cough, trying to mask your discomfort at his closeness. “I, uh- you didn’t hear anything, did you?”  
  
The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them. You cringe as Baldi’s face scrunches up in confusion. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”  
  
“Ah, well, I was- crying,” you lie. You can feel your face heating up as you speak, but you try to maintain a neutral expression under Baldi’s penetrating stare. “Crying pretty hard, and I didn’t expect you to be waiting for me. I thought you might have heard…”  
  
Baldi breaks the tension with another of his strange laughs. “Come now, it’s not like I have _super-hearing_ ,” he giggles. “No, I was only out here for a minute or two before you got out.”  
  
You heave a deep sigh. Of course - you’re being paranoid. Why would Baldi follow you all the way out to this bathroom immediately after leaving? He clearly wasn’t concerned when you left, because nothing weird happened. You are just overreacting, and taking his words as meaning more than they actually do.  
  
With this comforting thought in mind, you read the rest of the page, and everything looks in order - it’s quite a standard job contract. You won’t be getting paid, but that was a given with this kind of work.  
  
You blink a little when you see that in a couple of places, Baldi has signed his own name wrong - in a scratchy, weird font that looks like ‘BALD’ - but you figure that’s just the way his signature looks sometimes. Besides, you can’t judge on handwriting. You end up signing your own inscrutable signature and handing back the stack of papers.  
  
In return, Baldi hands you a card. It reads **‘PROFESSOR BALDI’** in the same garish Comic Sans as his stall banner, and in similar painful colours. That’s all that’s on the front. You look at the back, but it’s blank. There’s nothing on it but his name.  
  
“Now we know each other properly,” Baldi says with a wink. He pauses, then smacks himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand. “Wait a moment - no we don’t! How rude of me. What is your name, my new assistant?”  
  
That’s right - despite the massive amount of intimacies you have shared with this teacher today, name exchanging was not one of them. You mumble your name. Baldi nods, his eyes crinkling at the edges.  
  
“That is a pretty name. Yet I’m getting the sense that you aren’t a big fan of it.”  
  
Your eyes widen. How on earth could he possibly know that? It’s like those large black eyes are able to peer right into your skull and pull out every one of your insecurities. You reach up and feel the smooth, cold chain of your necklace, and let your fingers trail over the emerald gem resting on your chest. To your immense embarrassment, the movement draws Baldi’s gaze downwards. His eyes flick back up to look at you, and then he decides to kneel down - making him just a little bit above your eye-level.  
  
“You know, at my schoolhouse, no-one uses their real name,” says Baldi softly. “All of my kids, I give them names based on stuff they like or do. For instance, I have one very sweet student who loves to skip. We call her Playtime, and she adores it.” He smiles at you. “I was thinking we could do the same for you.”  
  
Is Baldi...really suggesting giving you a name? The notion is preposterous at best, and highly unprofessional at worst...surely the parents of the kids he worked with couldn’t be happy with such an arrangement? And yet the logical part of your mind is outweighed by your emotional one, a side currently doused in pleasant post-orgasmic hormones suppressing a bed of anxiety. Maybe a different name isn’t that bad of an idea.  
  
Besides - you might decrease the chance of any more embarrassing incidents if Baldi gives you a nickname. You’re not sure your heart can stand up to hearing your real name uttered in that unforgiving voice from earlier.  
  
“Sure. What do you have in mind?”  
  
“Hm. Well, we don’t know each other too well yet, but…”  
  
Baldi’s eyes flit back down to your chest, and you immediately fight the urge to cover yourself.  
  
“I was thinking... _Gem_ .”  
  
It clicks. Baldi isn’t staring at your chest - he’s staring at your pendant, still clutched between your tiny hands. You look down at the necklace in disbelief, and then back up at Baldi’s open, earnest expression. It’s almost impossible to believe this is the same man who so terrified and excited you just a short while ago. A warm feeling makes itself known in your heart, like your insides are bathed in toasty water.  
  
_Gem is a lovely name…  
  
_ “I like it,” you say in full honesty, unable to keep the grin off your face.  
  
“Fantastic!”  
  
Baldi places his paperwork carefully on the ground before grabbing hold of one of your hands in both of his, his long fingers folding around yours with ease.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gem,” says Baldi. “I really look forward to working with you.”  
  
“Thank you, Baldi,” you say, sincerely touched. “I feel the same.”   
  
Baldi smiles. “I’ll just head off and square everything with your supervisor. I hope to see you on Monday, 8am sharp, wearing whatever you like and bringing whatever you think you’ll need!”  
  
Just as suddenly as he burst into your life, Baldi was gone, taking off down the corridor with the same unbelievable speed you saw when he dragged you from the gymnasium mid-panic attack. You watch him sprint off into the distance until he’s nothing more than a distant, noodle-like smudge, and then he’s gone around a corner and you’re left with nothing but your thoughts.  
  
Eventually, you make yourself move. Despite the rollercoaster of emotions you experienced today, right now, you feel pleasantly light. Time to head home and have a relaxing evening. After all, you’ve just secured a real job!  
  
With that wonderful knowledge at the forefront of your mind, you head off down the corridor and towards the exit, exhausted and ready to chill out.  
  
Yet beneath your tiredness, something else fuels the gentle pulse of pleasure still beating in tandem with your heart.  
  
An insistent reminder just below your active thoughts.  
  
**_Good girl..._ **


	2. Classy Behaviour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still reeling from your encounter with Baldi at your college, you get ready for your first day working alongside the Math teacher - and are wholly unprepared for what is to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my goodness, hello everyone!! thank you so much for being so patient while waiting for this next chapter. the outpouring of praise and kind words i've had from so many people on this silly little fic has been overwhelming, and i'm grateful for every single one of you, whether you've commented, left kudos, or just had a glance and enjoyed yourselves :3c
> 
> as some of you correctly guessed, i am writing our dear Reader here with reference to my own struggles with anxiety and other mental health issues. i'm so pleased that this portrayal resonates with so many of you, and i will strive to continue making the Reader and their struggles as relatable as possible <3
> 
> this chapter is dedicated to all of you!!! my wonderful supportive friends, both those who are into BBIEAL and those aren't :D i've had the pleasure of reading some seriously fantastic Baldi fics since i posted the first chapter, and i hope that people will continue to write them!! if you're thinking about writing something, please go ahead and do it - you'll feel amazing :3c
> 
> thanks again, everyone - i hope you enjoy this chapter ;)
> 
> (P.S. this fic is full of a lot of silly little references both to the game and to stuff popular in the fandom. bonus points for you if you can find any!)

The weekend passed in a blur. Nothing about the events which transpired on Friday seemed remotely real once you stepped back into your poky little student flat, but the change in you was evident - at least, it certainly was to your roommates. The whole time the two girls you lived with kept teasing you about having a ‘glow’. Whenever they tried to press you about what happened at college, you couldn’t do anything but blush and giggle.  
  
Whatever task you were doing - washing the dishes, exercising, trying to get some reading done - Baldi lurked at the edges of your mind, morphing into a smooth, attractive caricature that occupied your thoughts with all of the pleasantness he’d shown you, and none of the terror. The logical part of your mind was tucked away as if unsightly, while your emotions roamed free, replaying over and over all the elements of your weird interactions with the stick insect-turned-teacher. His unusual voice; his unnaturally red mouth; even the green shade of his turtleneck all stuck out in your mind in bright neon.   
  
However, it was at night when the thoughts haunted you the most.  
  
The moment you were alone in your room with your lights off, you could feel the ghost of those long fingers on your body. They always started atop one of your hands, clutching and enveloping yours the way they did in that gold-struck classroom.   
  
But here in the quiet gloom, away from all prying eyes, you close your own and imagine those fingers climbing along your arms, and reaching up to cup your face. Breathy words of praise and encouragement drip from stunning red lips which shine even in the darkness, and you melt into his touch, unable to quiet the thrumming of your pulse. As you let your own hands drift across your body with a phantom-feather touch, you find your consciousness twinning once again, splitting off to speak to you in a nasal gospel.   
  
By the time the dark of Sunday evening descends, you are totally consumed.   
  
Monday morning arrives without fanfare, and yet you feel like your blood has been replaced with pure caffeine. It’s with fumbling hands that you button yourself into what you hope is a somewhat formal shirt-and-trousers combination. Baldi told you to arrive in whatever you liked, and that lack of certainty, as it always did, set your anxiety ablaze.   
  
The one thing you have no trouble choosing to wear, however, is your lucky pendant. You hook it underneath your shirt collar, ensuring its safety while being visible on the outside of your shirt. You want to wear your new name - _Gem_ \- like a badge of honour.   
  
When you finally step off the bus and find yourself presented with the infamous Schoolhouse, it’s a nasty shock.   
  
The building is ramshackle and prison-like, totally devoid of a slanting roof and looking more like a giant grey eraser than a place of learning. Yet sure enough, there are children filtering into the ugly establishment, all seeming happy enough to go inside. You remind yourself not to be so judgemental. It’s not like your own school is overflowing with funds.   
  
All the same, it’s with some apprehension that you make your way through the glaringly yellow double doors.  
  
The first thing you notice inside the Schoolhouse is the mix of pupils. By the way Baldi spoke, you had assumed that most of his pupils would be of elementary school age, around 5-11. Certainly there are some young pupils milling around and making their way to class. But what really surprises you is the amount of teenagers: some only look a couple of years younger than you. The school hardly looks large enough to contain so many grades, and you never would have suspected an age-integrated establishment.   
  
Immediately, you sense the eyes of these teenagers drawn to you. You cough self-consciously and try to smooth out your dress shirt, feeling incredibly awkward. Handling little kids was one thing, as you felt like you were good with them, but having people close to your age who would be able to zero in on your insecurities makes your anxiety flare. To throw off this feeling, you start moving down the hall as if you know what you’re doing, all the while trying to make sense of the array of students. _Perhaps this was a school which catered towards special needs?_  
  
Before you can dwell on it any further, you’re drawn to a commotion down the end of the hall. A tall, rotund teen dressed in an eye-wateringly orange sports jersey is blocking the hallway, while a little girl in red is talking animatedly at him, bouncing up and down on the soles of her feet. She seems anxious to get past, but the teen isn’t allowing her to move.  
  
“I wanna play with someone!” The little girl holds the handles of a skipping rope up to the teen, seemingly asking him to play. The teen, of course, doesn’t grab the skipping rope. He just looks coolly back at the kid.  
  
“No items, no pass.”   
  
“Oh!,” says the little girl, her bottom lip trembling. “That makes me sad…”   
  
You feel a stab in your gut as the little girl’s expression sinks. You remember all too well what it felt like to be bullied. It’s why it was easier to spend your middle school years in isolation. Although your anxiety is getting worse, this is nothing compared to the way you felt in your college gym; back then you were an adult, surrounded by adults.   
  
Upon closer inspection, you can see that this little girl’s eyes are not eyes at all, but hollow sockets. This realisation compounds your feeling of horror - this teenager was stopping a girl without eyes from going about her day!  
  
 _No more excuses,_ you think. _I have to step in.  
  
_ “Hey!”  
  
You advance on the two. The little girl inclines her head in your direction, while the teen looks surprised.  
  
“She just wants to play with you,” you say, in a shaking voice. “You don’t need to be rude to her.”  
  
“Can’t let her pass without items,” says the teen, all surly. “You new or somethin’?”  
  
“Yes,” you say, feeling anger boiling in your gut. “Yes, I am. I’m your new teach-”  
  
“Gem?”   
  
You whirl around - and feel the breath get knocked from your lungs.  
  
Baldi approaches from the crowd, practically stepping over the sea of children and teenagers. He towers heads above everyone else, and that lolloping, cryptid-like movement of his limbs is hypnotising to watch even from a short distance.  
  
“Glad you made it!” Baldi smiles at you with his freshly-lipsticked mouth. You notice his eyes dart down to your pendant, and you feel that his smile grows a little when he does. “Now, what’s all the commotion?”   
  
You also can’t help noticing that as Baldi arrives, every single person in the hallway - even the smallest of the children - stops talking. Discomfort settles in your stomach as you feel the weight of every line of sight concentrating on you. Baldi’s eyes in particular - the eyes you’ve been thinking about all weekend, with their impenetrable beetle-black veneer - feel like they’re unfurling you, exposing you to everyone.  
  
“One of your students isn’t being very nice,” you manage to say, cringing a little at your word choice. “I didn’t think it was good behaviour, so I stepped in.”   
  
“Well, that’s terrible! Let’s see if we can work this out.”  
  
You swallow as you take in Baldi’s appearance. Baldi has dispensed with the goofy turtleneck from Friday - clearly a more comfy-and-casual affair - for a white shirt, deep green sweater-vest and matching tie. In combination with the bright crimson pop of his lips, it’s a look which suits him far too well, and you have to fight the heat starting to crawl up your neck.   
  
Something else that catches your eye is the frankly enormous bright yellow ruler he’s holding, one that looks comically scaled up from a regular ruler to accommodate his large, spindly hands. Painted along the edge in a sloppy manner are what you can only assume are inches, but their marks are far bigger than they should be.  
  
Baldi crouches down - all the way to his haunches - to talk to the little girl more directly. “Hey Playtime! Do you mind if we chat?”  
  
“Not at all, Mr. Baldi,” says the little girl, who you now remember Baldi talking about last week.   
  
“It’s a Bully is always here in the mornings, right? And you know he needs to block this hallway?”   
  
Playtime nods. You furrow your brow, confused by Baldi’s syntax.  
  
“Good! So you know this is his job. It’s to keep you safe!”   
  
Baldi reaches out and boops Playtime on the nose, causing her to giggle.   
  
_Oh, gosh,_ you can’t help but think. _He’s adorable.  
  
_ The sound of Playtime’s laughter echoes in an eerie fashion, as the remaining students (many of them having filtered into the surrounding classrooms) stay deathly quiet. Even so, you find yourself hopelessly enamoured with Baldi’s easy smile, and the way Playtime clearly adores him. You should have guessed from how comforting it felt to talk to him back at your college, but seeing how well he gets on with the kids puts you a little more at ease.   
  
“If you want to get past,” Baldi continues, “you need to give Bully an item - and to get an item, you need a shiny quarter. Candy bars and BSODAs work best, I find! That’s how you use items, you know?”   
  
You blink, incredulous. The context clues seem to imply that this child’s name...is _It’s a Bully?_ You remember Baldi saying that the kids liked to go by nicknames, but what kind of nickname was that?   
  
Seemingly out of nowhere, Baldi produces a quarter, and presses it into Playtime’s hand. He guides her over to a vending machine stacked up against the wall, and helps her place the quarter into the slot. Another can of that dreadful BSODA (the same which you had been tasting on your tongue all weekend) pops out, and Playtime dutifully hands it over to the surly teen.   
  
Bully grins at Playtime. “Thanks for the generous donation!”   
  
Before the words are so much as out of his mouth, Bully vanishes, leaving behind nothing but an echo of his own voice.You gasp and look around frantically. The boy had disappeared into thin air! Yet both Baldi and Playtime look utterly unperturbed. In fact, Baldi reaches over to ruffle Playtime’s hair, like they hadn’t just witnessed a teenager evaporate.  
  
“You run along now, Playtime,” says Baldi, tapping his wrist. “It’s almost time for your class.”  
  
“Thanks Mr. Baldi!” Playtime says happily. She takes her skipping rope and dashes off down the hall. You stand with your mouth agape.  
  
“He’s gone!”   
  
“Oh yes,” says Baldi. “Quite talented, isn’t he? I’ve tried to get It’s a Bully to tell me how he manages that little teleportation trick for a long time, but he won’t let it slip.”  
  
“It’s a Bully,” you repeat.   
  
“Ah, it’s just a nickname,” Baldi says with a chuckle. “The kids prefer that to their real names, and it doesn’t disrupt their learning. I see no harm in it.”  
  
“But you call him _Bully_ ,” you say, hearing the anxiety creeping into your voice. “Won’t that make him think that he has to be mean to people? That that’s all he’s good for?”   
  
Baldi glances back at you, quizzical, as he ducks through a set of double doors. “Why, every good school needs a good bully,” he says, holding the doors open for you. “Do you not have one at your college?”   
  
You feel like you’re in the Twilight Zone. “No - that kind of thing isn’t really tolerated,” you say, with some hesitation. _Since when was saying that bullying isn’t looked upon favourably in an educational establishment weird?  
  
_ But you never get to find out Baldi’s response, as he stops in front of a classroom and holds this door open for you too. You step inside, and feel your nerves immediately fire on all cylinders.  
  
You’re surprised to see that the class is already full, with all spare seats except one occupied. Even more surprising is who is filling up the classroom. Every single person in this room looks to be a young adult, ballparking around eighteen or nineteen, with a few in their early twenties (like yourself). As soon as you step in, all of those eyes snap to you, and any chatter instantly dies. You begin to sweat, but you try to steady your breathing and smile at the others.  
  
“Good morning everyone!” Baldi stoops in through the too-low door frame and makes his way over to his desk. “I’d like you to meet Gem. They’re going to be observing our class today.”   
  
“Hello, Gem,” the class responds as one. Their voices echo as a single, monotone chorus. The sheer weirdness of the past twenty minutes is starting to set in, and you feel extremely unnerved by the blank stares the class are giving you.   
  
But Baldi’s gentle smile helps a little bit of reason kick in. You were hardly excited about Math yourself - _and could anyone be as passionate as Baldi?_ Even now you can see a curious shine in his eyes. There’s a little giddiness to his loping motions as he places his ruler on his desk and aligns it neatly. You’d been around overzealous teachers before, and as endearing as you found Baldi’s behaviour, you couldn’t help but sympathise with his poor students.   
  
“Here,” says Baldi, retrieving something from his desk. “I’d like you to test yourself on some basic math principles while my students get on with this morning’s assignment. Don’t worry; everyone in here has done this before, and it’s never been a problem.”   
  
He hands you a strange, bright green tablet, pasted with the words ‘You Can Think Pad’ along the top. It’s an archaic device, something straight out of Mavis Beacon, but you’re oddly charmed by how retro it looks. _Leave it to Baldi to colour-code his tablets.  
  
_ Diligently, you take your seat and turn on the tablet. You’re thankful that the free desk is pressed up against a wall with a window, as you always feel quite unsafe when you have to sit in the middle of a classroom.   
  
From your new vantage point, you notice that on the blackboard (how old-fashioned) the words **‘MATH = MORE MATH’** are emblazoned in chalk, with an ascending scale of the word. Another **‘MATH’** also snakes its way up the board at a slant. _Some kind of inside joke_ , you decide.   
  
To your surprise, the tablet starts up with a fun little jingle, and a miniature, digitised Baldi pops up in the bottom left of your screen. A small grid with a math problem alights as well, complete with boxes - presumably for noting if an answer is right or wrong. At full volume, mini-Baldi starts speaking:  
  
“ _Now it’s time for everybody’s favourite subject: math! Answer the three questions correctly, and you might get_ something special. _”  
  
_ Those last words take you off guard, as the digital Baldi drags out the syllables in a way which coats them with uncomfortable importance. You repress a squeak and try to pass it off as a cough.  
  
 _“Just type the correct answer into the empty box! Press the enter key on your keyboard when you think you have the right answer. Problem one: two plus four equals…?_ ”   
  
You glance up. All of the students surrounding you are not paying attention - instead they’re flicking through their math books, and scribbling down numbers on notation paper. Baldi doesn’t seem to have given them any instructions, so there must be some kind of agreed silent work period at this time of class.  
  
The only person looking at you is Baldi, who sits at his desk with his fingers interlocked and his chin resting on his hands. His expression is inscrutable.   
  
You quickly punch in a ‘6’. One of the boxes lights up in a check mark.  
  
“ _Great job - that’s right!_ ”  
  
You feel a small stab of pride at mini-Baldi’s praise, and then immediately feel ridiculous for feeling it. _These are kindergarten math questions!_ But there is no time to focus on your own embarrassment, as mini-Baldi rolls on with the next question: “ _One plus six equals…?_ ”   
  
With no hesitation, you type in ‘7’. Another check mark lights up, and mini-Baldi cries, “ _I can’t believe it! You’re incredible_.”   
  
“You’re doing _fan_ tastic,” says Baldi from the front of the room. He winks at you. You try to hide the corners of your lips twitching up into a smile, but you can’t help but be hideously pleased. As infantilising as this is, it reassures you to know that everyone in the room has already gone through the same process. No need to be anxious as they’re all absorbed in their own work.   
  
The real Baldi’s praise is so warm and his smile so inviting that you only half-hear the mini-Baldi as he starts to read out the next question.  
  
Without warning, an ungodly static sound erupts from your tablet:  
  
  
  
 **“** **_2̵̣̜̠̯̞̬̙̳̜̝͑̓̉̏͗̋̈́͑̊͑͝ͅ3̷͓̥̦̺̪̮̘̪̯͉̤̆̅̎̔̐͑͘͜4̷̨̛̙͍̗͒̎̉̍͂̂͌͛̚͠͠͝5̸̡̨͕̤̭͈̫͚̘̻̳̈́̿ͅ4̴̛̜̯̞̃̒̏̂̊̕͘3̸̢̖͈͉̭̜̺̟̅͊̈͊͋̍̕ͅ2̴̧̡͇̥̼̞̰̙̹̗͍̹̜̍3̷̙̼̈́̈́̂̽̓͆̓͘̚ ̴̢͓̪̆͛̋̆̍̐̐̈̅͝͝_ ** **plus** **_̴̧̱̱͕̲͓̦͖̹̪̺̊̈́̂͊͝7̷͈̪̟͙̦̲̝͖͒̄̂̈́̊͊0̵̧̮͓̬̥̻̎̈́̏̈̌5̶̡̼̜̣̩̪̩̠̞͓̮̲̖͈̈́̏̈̀͆̃̈́͑̄̑̌͂͐͘0̵̨͚̲̻̜̪̝̦̠̟̊͒͒́̾͌͠9̷͚͈̟͔̬̮͓̤̙͒̆͐͊̕̚͝͝3̸̡̠̣̮͋̍̊̋̃͝2̵̧̤̼̾̐̓̾͌̓̔̈́͛̅̂͆̈̈́ ̷̢̧̥͓͔͖̺̹̺̼̿́̐̔̑͛̎͌̓͆̎̀͝_ ** **times** **_̷̞̱̦̘̱̳͛̆͑̆̇͑̾͗̒͋͆1̸̛̛̘̜͔̘͓̭̝̖͆̂̂̋̒̏̕͘2̷̢̧̛̛̫͉͇̮̜̽͂͂̀͆̽̒̋̅̾̕͝͝5̸̨̠̫̻͚͎̦̖̙̈́̎̆͛̍̓̽̕͠9̷̧̏̈́̍̃͋̓̔̆̀͘̕͘͘͝9̸̘̾͌̈́̇́̊̑̿̈́̀2̸̺͉̯͖̩̜̝͉̘͇͈̅̓̃̓̄̌̈́͘ͅ5̵͈̩̌̐͛͆͒͐̔̇͂͝͝6̵̡̢̢̛̰͉̻͎̺̪̥̰̠̮͙͇͒̀̾͌̓͘͠3̶̡̤̳̭͍̔̌̀̌̔3̴͈̩͗͌̆̉̓̃͘5̷̢̧̼͍̤̫̲̯̯̟̦̳̖͉̈́̍͐̀̒̉̇͒̓͘͝_ ** **̸͇͙͎̞̦̤͈͖̻̮͈́̋͗͑͛̍̀̊̚͜͠͝ͅ=̵̥̫̓̎̿͜ equals…?”  
  
  
  
** You jump, making your chair squeak. The tablet now displays a garbled, writhing mess of symbols which barely resemble integers. Mini-Baldi looks on at you expectantly, as if this question were not only perfectly ordinary, but _easy_.  
  
You can’t answer this. There is no way Baldi could _expect_ you to. This has to be a really bad joke: unusual humour from an unusual teacher. Yet the real Baldi’s expression does not betray the kind of amusement you hope to see. He does not move, but he does maintain steady eye contact with you. There’s an evil glitter in the reflection of his eyes.  
  
 _He wants me to answer.  
  
_ As a last, desperate affirmation, you almost start to speak, wanting to beg your fellow students for help. But no one is looking at you, so the noise dies in your throat. Every single student has stopped writing, but their heads are bowed, their eyes trained obediently on their papers. It’s like the very air has been ripped from the classroom.  
  
You’re alone.  
  
You swallow roughly. Panic rises in your chest.  
  
 _Okay, look at the keys. There are only so many buttons to push. There are several different functions in the equation, so even though you can’t see the numbers, that must mean the outcome is something easy. It must be a trick question.  
  
_ A scraping noise. Baldi reaches for his ruler and slides it across the desk far too slowly, before leveraging it in his hand like he’s testing the weight. His bony fingers slip around the varnished wood with ease, and it’s with only the lightest, faintest sound that he gives his other palm an experimental _slap_.  
  
Something about that soft noise makes the alarm bells in your brain start screech.  
  
 _It’s now or never.  
  
_ You inhale...  
  
...and hit the ‘0’ key.   
  
The music grinds to a juddering halt. You watch in horror as the mini-Baldi’s smile upturns, deepening into a repellent, angry frown. The screen holds for a few seconds, and then the whole tablet powers off, leaving you with nothing but the empty feeling which always comes when shutting down a device.  
  
“Oh, Gem…” the real Baldi whispers.   
  
The hairs on the back of your neck prickle at the sound of that voice. It’s the same voice from back in that college classroom, where the walls were decorated with golden light…  
  
The voice Baldi used as he slammed his hands against the desk, leaning over you and offering two words of sinfully meaningful praise.  
  
 _The ‘good girl’ voice.  
  
_ Every pair of eyes in the class is locked onto you now. You don’t know when they all looked up, but the air is thick with expectation.   
  
_Smack.  
  
_ You jolt, and your blood pounds in your veins. Baldi caresses the handle of his ruler with his fingers, and cradles the other end with his opposite palm. As if in a trance, you watch as Baldi tilts the ruler away from his other hand at an exacting ninety-degree angle, almost robotically practiced. You’re unable to make yourself look away, even as Baldi forces the ruler down once more.   
  
_Smack.  
  
_ The guy sitting next to you - tired-looking, glasses slipping off the end of his nose - turns to you, a wild expression in his eyes.   
  
“Run,” he breathes.  
  
“What?” You’re frozen in your seat. Baldi is standing up now, his face plastered with a scowl.  
  
“I said-” The guy abruptly leaps up from his chair, pulls you out of yours by the shoulder and shoves you towards the exit. “- _RUN_!”  
  
You stumble and fall into another student’s desk, stabbing your ribs on the corner. You cry out in pain and try to turn back, but another student yanks you from your place and pulls you towards them, practically throwing you towards the door. You shout as the student closest to the door hauls it open, seizes you and thrusts you out into the corridor.  
  
Behind them rises the looming figure of Baldi, towering up like a monster.  
  
You don’t need telling twice. At a sprint you take off, your sensible shoes sticking and sliding awkwardly on the popcorn-coloured carpet. You hurtle down the corridor (the part of your side which hit the desk corner crying out in protest) and you don’t stop to look over your shoulder because the _smack_ of Baldi’s ruler gives you your pursuer’s position.   
  
_What the fuck!_ you scream inside your mind. _Is this some sort of messed up hazing ritual? I’m supposed to be his teaching assistant! Twenty minutes ago he was the sweetest guy in the world, chatting with me and his students...and now he’s chasing me with a ruler!  
  
_ As the fear propels you forward your mind becomes awash with a flood of images and feelings from Friday. Your first look at Baldi behind his ridiculous stall, looking for all the world like a sweet, nerdy bug pretending to be a man. The impossible strength of his grip as he pulled you from the gymnasium and away from the source of your panic.  
  
The warm sensation of his hand resting on top of yours...  
  
“ _No running in the halls!”_   
  
You scream. A tall man - nowhere near Baldi’s monstrous stature, but still a considerable height - pops up out of nowhere, his right index finger raised to the sky in an accusatory fashion. You damn near smack straight into him, but skid just at the last second and fall to the floor.   
  
“Detention for you,” says the man, in an odd, echoing voice.  
  
He grabs you by the arm and begins pulling you along the corridor. You twist around, trying to gain some sense of where Baldi is now, but you can’t hear him anymore. The only thing you can do is let this dark-haired individual - who you are baffled to see is not wearing any shoes, only socks - drag you through the halls. You note, with no small degree of terror, that the man’s eyes are completely obscured by a viscous, inky liquid, some of which drips down onto his cheeks.  
  
“Are you the Principal?” you ask. You remember reading the name ‘Principal of the Thing’ on the contract Baldi provided (alongside some vague specifications about codes of conduct and expected behaviour), but you were so shaken by Baldi’s sudden appearance that you hadn’t given the strangeness of the name much thought. It must be that staff abide by the ‘assigned name’ idea too.  
  
Either way, the Principal (you think) does not respond. Instead, he pulls you into a disused classroom, with windows looking out onto the halls. He manages to cast you a disapproving look despite the gunked-up nature of his eyes.  
  
“When will you learn?”   
  
And just like that, the Principal leaves, the door slamming shut behind him. You rush to the door and try to pry it open, but it won’t budge: it doesn’t seem to open from the inside.  
  
You’re trapped.  
  
 _Smack.  
  
_ _Smack.  
  
_ _Smack.  
  
_ The sound of Baldi’s ruler hits you like a physical force, and you cringe away from the door, backing up as far away as you can. Yet the incessant noise just grows louder, syncing horribly to the rapid pounding of your own heart. He’s almost upon you now.  
  
And you don’t know what he’s going to do.  
  
The door swings open.  
  
“When will you learn, indeed,” says Baldi, sounding rather smug. It’s such an uncomfortable transformation from the warm, friendly persona you’d been experiencing all morning that you can’t help but back up into the wall, wishing the school would swallow you.  
  
“I-I’m sorry Baldi,” you say, feeling terror well up in your chest. “One of your students told me to run, and I thought-”  
  
“But you didn’t, did you?” Baldi hits his palm with the ruler again, making another loud _smack._ “You didn’t think. You got the question _wrong_.”   
  
A thousand thoughts jostle for space in your brain at once. _Surely he can’t be serious? There is no way in hell that any person could ever answer a question like that - it has to be a trick!  
  
_ But the steady smacking of Baldi’s ruler against his palm, perfectly in rhythm, tells you that this is probably not the answer he’s looking for.  
  
Suddenly, you realise exactly why all of Baldi’s students are so well-behaved.   
  
“Why are you frightening me?” you whisper.  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Baldi takes a step towards you, _smack_ ing the ruler as he does. “Do you find my behaviour...inappropriate?”   
  
“Yeah...yeah I do,” you say, struggling to control your shaking voice. “Math is important, but that question was impossible! Even if I could answer it, you shouldn’t punish anyone for not getting something right. That’s just a broken system...all it teaches is for people to be afraid.”  
  
Baldi’s whole face darkens like gathering storm clouds, and the curl of his lip looks violent.  
  
“Did you say my system’s _broken_?”   
  
The last word is almost spat. When Baldi continues, his voice is strained, and it looks like keeping a measured tone is a serious effort.   
  
“My students know my methods. They understand the value of hard work, of basic mathematical principles, and of decency.” Baldi gestures around the room with his ruler. “Let’s talk about _your_ behaviour, Gem.”   
  
You follow his pointing. Being thrown in here without warning, you’d failed to notice the myriad of posters adorning the walls, each in familiarly garish Comic Sans text with accompanying low-resolution photographs. On the wall behind you, you can see Principal of the Thing’s poster, complete with a strange declaration that justice ‘ **tastes good and fills my tummy** ’.   
  
It isn’t until your eyes alight on Baldi’s poster that you feel your blood run cold.  
  
“You study literature, don’t you?” says Baldi. “I’m sure reading my poster will be a cinch.”  
  
You don’t respond.   
  
You can’t.  
  
“Read it,” says Baldi. “Aloud.”   
  
It isn’t a request.  
  
“Great teacher due to his...incredible hearing abilities…” you whisper. “He can...not only tell where any sound came from…”  
  
 _But who made it too.  
  
_ “That’s right.”  
  
 _No.  
  
_ Your mouth gapes. All the blood rushes to your head.  
  
“You...heard me?”  
  
Baldi laughs. This time, it’s not the cute, dorky laugh you’d enjoyed back at your first encounter. This is a laugh dripping with snark, one that’s mean and repulsed and makes you feel like your insides are drenched with something toxic.  
  
“ _Clear as crystal_.”  
  
You think you’re going to pass out.   
  
“Your ‘crying’ certainly put a twist in my plans,” Baldi says. “For a moment, I was even flattered. But then I thought: gosh, that’s not good behaviour at all, is it? _Touching yourself in a college bathroom?”_   
  
You cringe into the wall, heat burning in your cheeks. You want to scream, to cry, to break down and beg for his forgiveness. Even now you can see your whole career crashing and burning before your eyes - _what kind of company is going to want to hire a sexual deviant, masturbating on campus? To a stranger? To a_ teacher _?  
  
_ Baldi advances on you, moving smartly with just one giant step. As he moves, he brings his ruler down onto his palm with a _smack!.  
  
_ “Baldi, please, you don’t need to do thi-”   
  
With a sharp _swish_ , Baldi flicks his ruler forward and stabs you in the throat with its edge. You choke mid-word, and groan as Baldi presses the ruler into your Adam’s apple. Baldi’s lips part to reveal his teeth as he pushes: not enough to leave a bruise, but enough to make you gasp.  
  
“I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that you were a degenerate. I almost couldn’t contain my excitement,” Baldi hisses. He moves closer to you, forcing you back against the wall with his ruler pressing into your neck. He twists the ruler expertly, exerting just enough force to make you wheeze.  
  
“Yet your _filthy behaviour_ was just an added bonus. What really tipped me off was your reaction to my _praise_.”  
  
Baldi is so close to you that each word sends a ripple of gooseflesh spiking along your arms. His breath is warm, and somewhat fruity and clinical. The shine from those sharp, white canines framed by ruby-red lips leaves you transfixed. You’re aware of what is happening, but only dimly, because your brain is trying to protect itself from the humiliation and pain of having been found out. Your mind fuzzes over the nasty details, preventing any extremities of emotion which could put you in more danger, and compensates by fixing on immediate, sensory detail. But that still doesn’t stop the silk of Baldi’s voice from dripping through your dissociative fog:  
  
“Watching you cower in fear is such a thrill. Imagine my surprise when I saw this little glint in your eye. Not just the empty acceptance of a prey animal…but the want of a creature in _heat._ ”  
  
Suddenly, Baldi dips his face low, so close he’s almost buried in the crook of your neck. The ghost of his lips flutter against your skin. In seconds you are ripped from dissociation and catapulted straight into hyperarousal; now you are all-too-aware of the sweat prickling on your forehead, the saliva pooling around your tongue...  
  
And the gentle press of Baldi’s lips to your skin.  
  
Your fingers twitch limply at your sides as Baldi draws your flesh into his mouth in a supple kiss, teeth catching and holding on. The ruler still punctures your throat, and with Baldi’s angle - crouched and hungry like a predator - the varnished wood digs in deeper, forcing all of the air from your chest. Baldi’s empty left hand trails up your right arm. He grasps your shoulder - which feels so small in those gargantuan hands - and you shiver with the force of it, the brittle nature of your bones impossibly fragile under his tense grip.  
  
You can’t help it. You whine.  
  
Baldi smiles against you, and releases your skin. The area ignites with a powerful ache which throbs in tandem with the pain in your side, and on reflex you reach up to touch the mark. You feel the raised bumps of a wide hickey scored into your flesh. Baldi pulls back, but his hand stays on your shoulder, and the ruler remains pressed against your neck.   
  
“Pathetic,” says Baldi, in a tone drenched with amusement. “Perhaps discipline is wasted on you. I’d just as soon have you cowering away like this, as I would teach you my basics in behaviour. I can’t very well have you as my assistant. Such a dynamic would be improper.”   
  
“But why now?” Your voice comes out with a crack. Tears well up fiercely behind your eyes. “Why go to all this effort just to get me here? Why the false pretenses?”   
  
“Oh. You still don’t understand.” Baldi sighs in an exaggerated fashion, and he shakes his head at you, making your cheeks burn hot with shame. “Quite honestly, I thought you’d figure it out much quicker. It’s rare that my targets fall for the ‘come and work for me’ routine.”   
  
“I-I don’t understand.”  
  
“Of course you don’t,” says Baldi nastily. “Let me spell it out for you. Matriculation to my Schoolhouse is something I undertake personally. You see, I can’t just have any old student coming under my instruction. Each year, I scout the local schools, colleges and universities, looking for students I believe would excel under my tuition. These are invariably students who are failing, close to quitting, or even those who haven’t had the chance to enrol at all.”  
  
You stare at Baldi, bewitched by the scary smile that spreads across his face. He looks _proud.  
  
_ “Every time, I assure the target that they will have a beneficial position at my Schoolhouse: working with children, gaining credit, etcetera. I give them a contract to sign which binds them legally to a year of tuition, no matter what they find objectionable. Not something that will hold up in a court of law, but something which will scare them into not leaving. To an inexperienced, vulnerable student, everything looks perfectly legal.  
  
“But then along came you.” Baldi’s smile grows wider. “You, shaking like a leaf, absorbing my words so readily. I already had you in that classroom - you would have done anything I said. But then, you offered me something irresistible... _blackmail.”  
  
_ Baldi mercifully pulls the ruler away from your throat. You cough and rub at the area, feeling the phantom wood still keeping you pinned.   
  
“I confess, those eyes of yours - captivating as they are - caused me to have second thoughts. Could I really follow through with something so unethical?” Baldi grins at you, wolfish. “In the name of math, of course.”   
  
“You can’t get away with this,” you whisper. “You won’t.”   
  
Baldi’s sudden movement takes you off guard. You try to cry out, but Baldi lunges, and slides his ruler straight into your mouth. You scream around the sudden intrusion, feeling varnished wood glide along your tongue, and you can’t suppress a gag as the ruler slides past your reflex trigger.  
  
“My dear, I don’t think you’re quite grasping the situation.” Baldi speaks evenly, and holds you with a level gaze. “If you talk back, step out of line, get my questions wrong or try to escape, I’ll visit your supervisor personally and inform them of your terribly inappropriate on-campus conduct in the sports building’s bathroom.”  
  
Baldi twists the ruler inside your mouth. You clench your thumbs in your fists, trying to suppress your gag reflex, and you manage to hold down your vomit. Baldi hums as he reads the ruler, like it were a routine measurement.  
  
“Hm. Four inches. Not bad. But you’re going to need a lot more practice.”   
  
Just as quickly as it arrived, the ruler is gone from your mouth. You shudder as a long strand of saliva connects your lips to the wood, only breaking when Baldi pulls the implement away with a flourish. He rests the dripping end of the ruler in his opposite palm, and allows his fingers to smooth over the wetness. He rubs the tips of his fingers together, as if testing the consistency, and you feel a horrid, lethal heat run down your spine.   
  
You feel uncontrollably violated.  
  
“Yes, I think you’ll be much better off as my student,” says Baldi. “You lack focus, ambition. If you do everything I ask, you’ll find yourself not minding the change from your old life.”   
  
“But you said-”  
  
“-that the world can be a very harsh place.” Baldi’s tone is malignant, almost tumorous when coupled with that sinister, knowing smile. “Yes, it can. Even more so for _bad little girls_ who don’t follow instructions.”   
  
Your heart contracts painfully at the words. The tears which have been building for so long finally give in and spill down your cheeks. Baldi snickers.  
  
“Aw, now here come the waterworks. Would tuition under me really be so awful?”   
  
Everything is too much. You feel impossibly small, and wish you could just curl up and hide away from the monster pinning you under the dark spotlight of his eyes. The tears won’t stop. Your mouth slackens and you start to bawl: a loud, hideous noise.   
  
_“Behave.”  
  
_ Baldi’s voice is like the crack of a whip. Instantly, you close your mouth. The tears continue slipping down your cheeks, but you keep the noise suppressed by biting down on your lip. For your own safety you manage to keep the cries for help trapped deep down inside.  
  
“There we are,” says Baldi, sounding pleased. “Much better.”   
  
The hand on your shoulder - keeping you pinioned under its tensile strength this whole time - snakes up, brushing past your ear. You swallow down an embarrassing noise as Baldi slips those spidery fingers into your hair. The pads of his fingers nestle, covering the whole expanse of your scalp. Even after everything that has happened, everything still happening, you’re mortified by how good the contact feels: how wrong and right mingle together to make you want to open your mouth up again and take that ruler back even further.  
  
Baldi kneels now, tensing his grip to keep you in place. You stare at the man who moments ago seemed so unforgiving, only to see a softness wrinkling the edges of his eyes and mouth.  
  
After what seems like an eternity of being subjected to this unnaturally warm gaze, Baldi pulls you into a hug.  
  
You’re pressed up against his torso, mouth suddenly thrust against the fabric of his sweater-vest and the ruler (held between the rungs of Baldi’s fingers) resting against your back.  
  
“Good girl,” Baldi murmurs. “Doesn’t it feel so much better to follow the rules?”  
  
You hiccup in surprise, a sob still stuck in your throat, but Baldi doesn’t move away. Instead, he pulls you in more tightly, and begins to rock a little: just an easy, back-and-forth motion. In time with his sways, Baldi starts to pat you, the ruler and his palm making a gentle, reassuring connection with your back. Distantly, you realise that the patting lined up exactly with the rhythm of Baldi’s ruler smacks from his earlier pursuit.  
  
You stay like this, entwined with Baldi and rocking together, for an amount of time you didn’t want to identify. Baldi is warm, and despite his skinniness you find yourself clinging to him like you would a soft toy. The runaway train of your thoughts comes to a steady stop, and you feel your worries simply melting away from you, soothed by the simple pleasure of personal attention and contact. There’s a shameful undercurrent of arousal curling through you, pulling with it the dregs of fear, but wrapped in Baldi’s arms you want to believe that for a moment you are safe, and loved, and cared for.   
  
When Baldi does finally let you go, you whimper, feeling the childish urge to tug him back and bury yourself again in his sweater. But you let him release you, and try to train your expression into something neutral - something which won’t betray the extremes of emotion racing through your blood.  
  
Baldi, for better or for worse, looks much like he did when you first saw him this morning: genial and kind, with his ruler being nothing more than a teaching instrument.   
  
“I believe we’ve reached an understanding?” Baldi asks.  
  
You nod, surprised by the question. _What would a negative answer make him do?_ There had to be some rhyme or reason to the constantly changing moods of this math teacher, but for the life of you, you couldn’t figure out what they were. Either way, Baldi looks for all the world like they’ve just had a conversation about an upcoming assessment.  
  
“I think it would be best if you took the rest of the day off,” says Baldi. “Today has been quite taxing for you.”  
  
You find yourself unable to respond verbally, so you just nod again. A sudden tiredness sweeps over your body. You wish Baldi would just pull you back into his arms so you could fall asleep against him, inhaling his scent and knowing no one else would dare hurt you when you’re in his arms.  
  
“It’s a shame.”   
  
You jolt. So engrossed were you in your fantasy, you hadn’t noticed Baldi make his way back over to the doorway. You clear your throat a little, managing to find your voice, and ask, “What is?”   
  
Baldi smiles. “That you can’t stay for longer today. You do look rather pretty when you’re flushed. But you see…”   
  
He looks out into the hallway, checking to see if anyone is listening. Satisfied that the coast is clear, he leans back in, and says, in a low voice, “...we can’t have a repeat of that behaviour at your college, now can we?”   
  
Baldi gives you a jerky little wave, and suddenly, he’s gone.  
  
It takes you a moment to gather your senses, so stunned are you by everything which has just transpired. You run to the door of the classroom and look both ways down the hallway, trying to see where Baldi went. But Baldi is nowhere to be found, and you can hear nothing but the faint conversation of the students in other classrooms.   
  
Standing in the hallway, you reach up to touch the aching mark on your neck. You can’t see it, but the sudden rush of pain - now allowing itself to flow that Baldi is gone - causes you to clap your palm over it.   
  
_I need to get out of here before anyone sees me.  
  
_ Yet before you make a beeline for the exit, you freeze, a flash of conversation playing insistently over and over again in your head. You want to push it down, to try and remember how scared you were, to make yourself run to the nearest police station and get help.  
  
But one fact loops in your mind:  
  
 _He called me pretty..._


End file.
